Series Introduction - 01

Description

Welcome to this series of lessons about the Visual Basic programming language. Bob Tabor from LearnVisualStudio.NET introduces the topic, sets expectations and tips on how to get the most out of this series, instructs you on where you can download the software you'll need to get started and offers some encouragement as you begin your journey.

Bob is a clear teacher. This is exactly the sort of content that always needs to be on C9, so that those of us who have been interested niners for years, but didn't know how to get started, have a place to turn.

Hello Bob, first all, thank you for such a great job, I really like the visual basic series, very well done.

I am wondering, could you help me out.

I want to write a database windows application, once I create the database in access, could you explain show me what I have to do to add the database to my project, create the connection and have the application display the information from the data base.

Thank you for these videos, I am just about to sit down and watch this one and the others in the series as well as the C# ones.I am only 15 year and need these videos to learn programming, I already have some experience with VB and C#, you would think school would help me learn(I'm from the UK) but they only teach Word, Powerpoint and Excel.I hope to do Software Development as a career and am hoping to learn how to develop for Windows 8.Thank you!

@Jorge ... Unfortunately that's a bit out of the scope of what Channel 9 asked me to create this time around. If you're only interested in free resources, I have to imagine that Channel 9 (or some other Microsoft web property) has a bunch of tutorials that could walk you through it.

Nice job Bob,I learned programming using QBASIC in 2005 when I was in school. I also worked with C. Being an engineering undergrad student, I want to develop a reservoir simulator program. theoretical part is very much clear to me but i'm afraid of programming intricacies. is this series useful for me? i'll have to use a lot of numerical solution techniques in my program. and i don't have enough time to learn programming in a full fledged manner that's why i am resorting to something that could just get my job done. Kindly help me in this regard. keeping in view time constraints (max. 2 months) is it the right place for me?

@Dawood: I know nothing of reservoir simulation, so I'm afraid I can't comment about the problem domain in any real depth. This series is geared towards learning the C# programming language and the basics of the .NET Framework. Assuming you could really latch on and understand the ideas I'm presenting, there would most likely be more to learn about rendering graphics on screen that simulate a reservoir (?), saving data about the reservoir to a database or some file-based data structure, a user interface to capture information from a user or to display raw data to a user. These are NOT topics covered in this series. Once you have the background of this series, however, you could dive deeper into those topic areas. It is roughly the equivalent of having a 4th grade education and writing a novel. Yes, kindergarten to 4th grade covers crucial information in our developments, however it is just a foundation to build on. On a smaller scale, that is the scope of this series ... to provide a foundation (fundamentals) for you to build on.

I'm a rookie in this community and in C# world, i really want to learn this, but have huge problem downloading:( Download the entire series' source code in c#) . it says phone code zip can not be downloaded. Can some one please help me. i tried on this website.

@Samoht_DK42: Sorry for the delayed response. I just downloaded the link in question (to a MAC no less!!!) and it worked for me. Perhaps it was a temporary outage of Microsoft's CDN or something? All I could suggest is to try again. Hope that helps!

@blake: Just to tie this up, we conversed via email. Hope that helped!

hi Bob, many thanks for your effort in making such excellent tutorial series.

i am a newbie on VB.NET and i m trying to make a little application using visual studio 2010 .Net framework 4.the program login to a website/ forum and i have made the interface and there is a login windowso what i m trying to make is to login in that forum from my program and then close that login window and show the resulting outcome (the page that is shown after logging in the forum after we login from usual web browser, like Firefox) in the new form/window in the same way yahoo messenger does.so far, i m just able to show that outcome in the webbrowser in the same login window,,thanks

I'm an 82 year old former cobol mainframe programmer/analyst (Control Data Corporation - circa 1960's)just trying to keep the mind active. When I try to watch the Series Intro 1201 for Visual Basic Fundamentals, I get about 3 seconds of video & audio then a pause then another 3 seconds of video & audio then another pause .... It's probably buffering. Any idea on how to correct that?

Hello Roy, I'm sorry you're experiencing problems ... several have had issues with streaming ... the solution is to download the video in your preferred video format ... see the links to the right of the video (near the top of this and every page) under the heading "Download" ... hope that helps! I hope I'm still writing code at 82! Fantastic story!

@sam: I don't think you can. That might be some feedback Microsoft may want to hear for future distribution. You may want to click the Feedback link below (in the footer) and express your desire to download entire series as one file in the future. I've found that Microsoft *does* take these sorts of requests seriously. Best wishes!

I have just completed this series of videos. I know they are aimed at absolute beginners but I am just returning to VB after a long break I found these videos very useful, just to point me in the direction of newer developments in the language.

As an example, I was working on a little card game for my kids as I worked through the videos, only to discover in video 23 that I should have ditched Windows forms for WPF. So now I have a second project I'm looking forward to investigate further

@Steve B: Hey Steve, no worries. So in 2002, Microsoft came out with "Visual Basic.NET", which was essentially version 7 of Visual Basic. In versions 6 and earlier, Visual Basic had all of the functionality needed to build applications embedded inside of it. In version 7, or rather, Visual Basic .NET, there was a distinction between the programming language and the .NET Framework, which you can think of as providing common services to all .NET programming languages (including C# and managed C++) most notably a library of functionality (the .NET Framework Class Library) and a managed virtual machine (the .NET Framework Runtime) which I think of as a "protective bubble that wraps around your program as it runs on the user's computer", managing memory and access to the computer's resources. At any rate, that was a fundamental shift. In 2012, Visual Basic 11 was released, coinciding with the .NET Framework v. 4.5. At this point, no one really talks about "classic Visual Basic" from versions 6 and earlier -- they are, after all, over 12 years old now. For the foreseeable future, all references to Visual Basic will be implying Visual Basic ".NET", even if they don't say it overtly. Hopefully that helps? All the versions and such can be a little confusing, admittedly.

@StevenB: Wow, thanks for the really nice comment! If you *really* want to ensure that the right people at Microsoft know that you want more training like this, please use the "Feedback" link in the footer of this page to let them know. They use the Feedback to decide what they'll do next for the community. Again, thank you for your kind words!

Hello Mr. Bob , few days ago I bought a book about Visual Basic , then yesterday I found this amazing series of videos about Visual Basic and C# , I want to ask you that would those videos give a well introduction to the basics of those two programming languages and OOP ? Thanks for your precious time you spent in doing that all .

Remark : I am a university student and have some experience with C programming language but no experience in Object Oriented Programming .

@Mahmoud1001: Beginning in lesson 14 you'll start learning the building blocks of object oriented programming ... namely classes, collections, etc. I say "building blocks" because after 15 years of practicing object oriented programming I'm still getting new insights every day. OO is a thought process -- you have to think differently and that takes time to digest until you begin thinking in objects. I would say this ... nothing I teach you will be useless knowledge -- I've hand-picked these topics because they are the most vital for you to understand before moving on ... you have to crawl before you walk and walk before you run.

@Mahmoud1001: The best way to make that happen is to forward that request to Microsoft. Use the Feedback link in the footer of this page. They listen to feedback and will contact me if that is what they want to do. Best wishes!

Hithanks alot for arranging such a lesson series. I have been working with ACCESS since 2004 but depending the only avl features in access. when ever the task becomes more complexed I am stuck and looking around for written VBA codes to solve my problem. Now I have decided to learn in proper manners.

Why, when you program, does the word "console" appear in teal? I'm trying to change it from black to teal, but when changing the "plain text" option everything changes, i.e. console.writeline() would appear in teal, as opposed to console being teal and writeline()being black. It looks nicer the way the you have it set. I realize this is sort of covered in video 4, but yeah sorry about the super trivial question.

@whycantibeteal2: As you'll learn in the upcoming videos, different words are used to create statements in code. Some are keywords, some are identifiers (variables), some are operators. Each type of word is highlighted in a different color. You can change color schemes to suit your purposes. If you don't like teal, you can change it. I think I have the default colors, but keep in mind I'm using Visual Studio / VB Express 2010, not 2012. The default colors changed. You can change them by going to Tools / Options ... on the left, choose Environment / General ... on the right, choose the Color Theme ... dark or light. You can also use these themes created by the community:

How do I get the buffering to stop once the initial buffering is done. I know about Stream Manager but non of the short cuts work (CTRL-ALT-SHIFT-s OR ALT-SHIFT-s) and cannot find stream manager otherside on Silverlight 5.1, internet explorer 9, Chrome 26.0, or Firefox 20.1 . Can you help?

On Visual Studio Express 2012 for WIN8 - I don't see Forms when I create new VB project. I see instead XAML options. How do I get the forms? I have done lots of VB6 programming, I am migrating to 2012. Is Forms a paid for options or can I get the for free? I cant even see these Forms from Online Selection menu!

As a 60 year-old "newbie" to the world of programming, I think I have finally found a series that I can stick to... tried starting with "Small Basic" but just seemed too simplistic and slow. Thanks, and Carry On, Bob!!

@JimmyG2: Awesome. Age is irrelevant. You can do this! (My problem is, as I get older, I'm less patient with my slow progress. I progressed slow when I was younger, but didn't need instance results.)

@Rachel: If you're committed to a full-time career as an enterprise software developer, I would probably point you towards C#. If you're planning on staying in hardware and just need to create an occasional utility / app for your own needs or for a small department, Visual Basic is a good place to start. And this video series is a great place to start, as well. Good luck!

First of all, great job with these tutorials. Both these and the C# ones are very good. I'm 13, and I enjoy them a lot. I started doing the C# originally a while ago, then forget about them, restarted, and forgot again, and I'm finally going to go through the VB ones. Hopefully being a year or so older has helped my patience. :) Could you please keep tabs on the C# comments? There are quite a few things stacked up. I had one big issue in particular I hope you could help with.

Dear Mr Tabor,For some reasons I just can't understand what is actually being done even after watching some of your videos I desperately need help as I have struggled with this language over the past college semester and it will still come again next semester if not my future would be seriously crippled.Thanks for your understanding,Mustansir Dohadwala